Obama, in his capacity as President of the United States, is supposed to be ‘leader of the free world’ and therefore, de facto, leader of NATO.

That alone should have demanded he immediately abandon his jolly in Cuba, where he is cosying up to a dictatorship, and return to Washington to lead the global response with a powerful statement from the Oval Office.

Particularly as up to a dozen Americans were wounded in Brussels, and for all he knew, possibly dead. One U.S. couple is still missing and unaccounted for.

But Obama had other ideas.

He stayed in Cuba, made a cursory 1-minute statement about the Brussels bombings, then went to the baseball at Havana’s Latinoamericano stadium.

Even more extraordinarily, once he was there he allowed himself to be filmed laughing and joking with Raul Castro, the pair of them raising their arms in a joyful crowd wave.

This, surely, was outrageously insensitive to the grieving people of Belgium, not to mention the families of those wounded and missing Americans?

As former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani put it: ‘You don’t send a picture of yourself laughing while people have just been blown up at a level that is the equivalent of September 11 to one of our allies.’

When asked what difference it would have made if Obama had cancelled his South American tour, Giuliani explained: ‘The difference is that it would have made people feel that he’s a leader, that he’s in charge. This would be like Franklin Roosevelt remaining at Warm Springs when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour.’

Exactly.

‘It’s very important not to respond with fear,’ Obama blustered, trying to explain his bizarre behaviour as fury erupted.

Yes, Mr President.

But it’s even more important for the most powerful man in the world to show some damn respect.

Just imagine what Americans would have thought if within hours of 9/11, the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair had gone to a football match and been seen giggling and clowning around with some dodgy communist despot.

All hell would have broken loose, and rightly so.

It’s also vital in this situation for a U.S. president to let the perpetrators of such evil know America means business when it, or one of its allies, is attacked.

Yesterday, Obama merely reiterated that his strategy to defeat ISIS remains airstrikes, intelligence and arrests. Tactics which have so far proved singularly unsuccessful in stopping them.

Retired 4-star general and former Director of National Security, Michael Hayden condemned Obama’s plan as ‘under-resourced and over-regulated.’

‘The United States is dropping 20 bombs a day on ISIS,’ he said, ‘that is not a relentless campaign.’

As with so much of Obama’s foreign policy, it smacks of his infamous reputation for ‘leading from behind’.

Obama insisted yesterday that getting on with normal life is the best answer to terrorism. He said, ‘a lot of it is also going to be to say: You do not have power over us. We are strong, our values are right. You offer nothing, except death.’

Wow. I bet those murderous medieval monsters are trembling in their suicide bomber vests at those stirring words, Mr Obama!

Not.

The truth is that ISIS increasingly DOES have power over us because its own ultra-violent campaign has made many people now deeply fearful of going about their normal lives in the way Obama suggests.

What I suspect the terrorists are really thinking is that if the U.S. president is so relaxed about them blowing up Brussels that he can go to watch baseball immediately afterwards, then they have nothing to worry about and can continue, with impunity, committing massacres on people also ‘going about their normal lives’.

I am reminded of Obama’s reaction when ISIS beheaded American journalist James Foley.

He made a quick speech saying how dreadful it all was, then, just seven minutes later, he was filmed teeing off on the golf course and laughing with some mates.

That was a disgrace, and so is this.

By stark contrast, France’s Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, declared; ‘We are at war. We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war.’

Absolutely right.

It IS war, a particularly evil war being waged directly at innocent civilians and it’s a war that we are currently losing.

Paris was hit hard twice within a few months, in concert halls, restaurants and football stadiums.

After the first attack, at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo cartoon, the world’s leaders gathered together in Paris to march in solidarity.

All except President Obama, who stayed at home and watched TV.

It looked terrible, like he didn’t care.

And to be harshly frank, I don’t think he did much.

The president has always seemed disturbingly detached from the true scale of the threat which ISIS poses to the world, quietly believing it to be ‘not America’s problem’.

From the early days of the terror group’s surging growth, he dismissed them as a bunch of amateurs.

Specifically, he said this days after ISIS overtook the Iraq city of Fallujah in January 2014: ‘The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think it’s accurate, is if a jayvee (junior varsity) team puts on Lakers uniforms, that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.’

That shocking complacency means that his administration has never really had a proper plan for destroying ISIS.

I genuinely think Obama hoped and assumed they’d just gradually wither and disintegrate.

Instead, they’ve grown steadily stronger, richer, deadlier and more popular to recruitment from disenfranchised, poor, angry young Muslims.

And a major part of their ability to do this has been America’s refusal to properly engage with them.

When a head teacher lets unruly kids run amok in a school, they get emboldened to behave even worse and get others to join them. With great power comes great responsibility and I think this president is failing us all when it comes to the so-called Islamic State.

Last night, to compound his ineptitude, Obama was seen awkwardly strutting the Tango in Buenos Aires with some hot female Argentinian dancer. He even looked like he’d been having lessons, so laboured and precise were his deliberate moves.

One again, the optics were appalling.

What kind of message does this send to ISIS, other than this outgoing U.S. President is now so demob happy that he’s got time to practice and perform the Tango as they wreak their hideous acts of violence?

It’s pretty obvious that Obama’s now mentally checked out. He clearly just wants to stick any big problems in the next president’s in-tray and focus instead on how history will now record his own legacy.

From a very selfish personal standpoint, Obama knows that ending the cold war with Cuba is a more easily achievable tick on his CV then trying to defeat a very formidable terror group which can’t be beaten in his tenure.

Rudy Giuliani, in his passionate attack on the president, said the attacks in Brussels, a NATO ally, were ‘just like an attack on us.’

Yes they were.

And history will now forever remember that when Belgium was knocked to its knees, Barack Obama went to a ball game and danced the Tango.